


All's Fair

by Pigzxo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-05
Updated: 2015-11-05
Packaged: 2018-04-30 05:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5152427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pigzxo/pseuds/Pigzxo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's wedding makes Dean miss Cas and reflect on their break-up. And maybe Dean gets a little too drunk and ends up on Cas' doorstep in the middle of the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All's Fair

Dean knocked back another flute of champagne. His third, if he was counting. Which he wasn’t. But he knew Sam was counting and he didn’t want his little brother worried about him on his wedding day, when all he should be worried about was how beautiful Jess looked in her wedding dress. And damn was she beautiful. She had refused to go on any pre-wedding diet but was still thin as a stick, her porcelain skin glowing in the candlelight, and the birthmark under her eye on full display. When a group of kids started banging their knives on their glasses, Sam kissed that mark before kissing her lips.

            Dean twirled the empty champagne flute in his hand. He wanted another. He wanted five more, if that was even possible. His dress shoes –black ones that Sam had picked out, bought, and then brought over to his house so he would try them on– sank into the wet grass. It had rained throughout the ceremony; a light sprinkling that had made Sam want to move to the indoor location but Jess had said the guests could deal with. Now the sky was clear, bright stars winking at the guests from above, and the formal shoes of a hundred guests were sinking into soaking wet grass. Most of the woman had foregone their heels in favour of bare feet, but the men had to stick it out, leather ruined by mud, and the hems of pants marked for dry-cleaning before their suits went back to the store.

            Sam and Jess kissed again. This time the glass clanking came from Charlie. Her girlfriend, Dorothy, was hanging onto her shoulder, her lips pressed into the crook of Charlie’s neck. She was drunk. Her glassy brown eyes barely focussed as they swam around the dance floor before landing back on Charlie’s face. And Charlie kissed her, her hands dropping from the silverware, and the two of them dissolved into happy, drunken giggles.

            Another glass of champagne wouldn’t kill him.

            He took one from a passing waiter and forgot to check the guy out. Uniforms were a particularly big kink of his. Waiters weren’t ideal, but they were nice to look at. Especially cater-waiters, with their little black bowties and crisp, ironed vests over stark white shirts. But tonight he couldn’t care less what the waiters looked like, whether they were dressed properly or not, whether they walked with that extreme carefulness that waiters usually did. All he could think about was how good Cas would look in a suit if he was standing next to him, drunkenly laughing into his shoulder, like he should have been.

            That thought was like an arrow through his chest. Dean never understood why people thought Cupid’s job was to start love affairs. An arrow through the chest, a lancing plastic pain inflicted by love, that came at the end. When in the shadows of an apartment an argument finally dissolved past yelling, past tears, past apologies and became icy silence. The kind of silence that couldn’t be broken, that would never be broken, because any words thrown out into it would get swallowed by its white noise. There was nothing left to say. No words that could save the situation. So Dean had left. Goddamn him, he had left in the middle of the fucking night and ended up on Sam’s doorstep, only to find the tears again. There had been nothing else to do in the moment. He had made the right choice.

            His breath hitched at the thought and he drank the champagne like a shot. A quick flick of his wrist, a bob of his Adam’s apple, and suddenly bubbles were in his stomach. He took a deep breath, shoulders heaving, and tried to settle down. He wished momentarily that he could sink into the ground, past the grass and the dirt and just disappear from the party. That would be easier than watching Sam and Jess step out onto the dance floor. It would be easier than listening to Hunter Hayes’ “Still Fallin’” play from the DJ booth. The song wasn’t the problem. The problem was hearing the echoes of Cas whispering the lyrics in his ear as they fell asleep the night after they had helped Sam and Jess pick out the song. They were going to get married. They hadn’t told anyone that, not wanting to step on Sam’s thunder, but as soon as Sam and Jess were back from their honeymoon, they were going to announce it to all their friends, their family, and take all their shock head on. That had been the fantasy anyways.

             Ellen dragged a reluctant Bobby onto the dance floor and glared at him until he smiled. The two of them danced on each other’s feet, but laughed every time their toes touched. They bumped into Sam and Jess and switched partners, pulling the happy couple away from each other as the song came to a close. Ellen’s dress twirled lilac under the flickering lights, spreading out like the petals of a daisy, and Dean could imagine himself picking them. _He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. He loves me not._

A hand hit his shoulder and he swallowed hard to stop himself from flinching. Over his shoulder, he saw his dad behind him, smiling at Sam on the dance floor. Dean waited for the inevitable speech, the gush of words about how he would find the right girl one day and settle down too. The story about how he had met their mom, fallen in love, and they had two beautiful kids together before tragedy struck. Cancer in her bones. The long treatments. The months Dean had spent taking care of Sam, dressing Sam for school, making sure Sam brushed his teeth, did his homework, ate all his vegetables. Dean took a deep breath and prepared himself.

            “I remember my wedding day,” he said. “Your mom wore a dress just like that. Her hair was shorter, of course, but she looked a lot like Jess does now.” He paused, clapped Dean on the shoulder once more, and added, “It seems history does repeat itself.”

            Dean nearly choked on his lack of air as his father walked away. Shaking his head, he turned his gaze towards the line of bridesmaids sitting along the long table. He blinked the image of his father and mother dancing on their wedding night from his mind. Their smiles. The way she used to look at him. How tight he would have held her just to make sure she was safe dancing in her heels. He looked all the bridesmaids’ in the eye, trying to remember which one Jess had said asked about him. He remembered she was brunette, but he didn’t know Jess’ friends that well. They were all college types, into college guys, and paid him very little attention once they found out he was a mechanic with his GED.

            The second last bridesmaid smiled at him. Petite. Brunette. Blue eyes just a touch too big for her face. Dean forced himself to smile at her and approached the table. “Do you wanna dance?” he asked.

            “Or we could just get outta here,” she replied.

            He tried not to take offense. He knew his reputation preceded him, especially among Jess’ friends, and he knew dancing with him was never really her goal when she told Jess she was interested. She wanted a good, solid fucking, done in the back of the bar or up in a seedy motel room, her dress only half off and the whole thing over before anyone at the party even noticed they were gone. Once and done. Not looking for anything serious, just horny. Not that he was looking for anything more either, not right now when every happy couple made him want to barf, but it pinched at his heart that she couldn’t see him as anything more than a strong set of hands.

            Cas had never thought of him like that. When they lived together, start of college, Cas had asked Dean for help on his homework all the time. He asked for a new perspective, for another way of looking at things, and his blue eyes shone with adulation every time Dean managed to explain something so he could understand it. Dean’s strong hands had come into the equation later, when he cracked open beers for Cas while he was studying for finals, rubbed his shoulders when he spent days bent over his desk, and when his fingers fell below Cas’ waistband so the guy could get just a little bit of relief.

            But his hands were what this girl was looking for. Her name was unnecessary, a distraction. He gave her a location and walked off, out of the tent and back into the church. He grabbed a bottle of wine on his way by an empty table and chugged from the open top. Red was never his favourite, no matter how often he lied and said it was, but it did the job. It made his vision blurry, his steps uneven, and allowed him to let out a laugh at the irony of hooking up in a church once he stepped through the oak doors.

            She arrived a few minutes later, breathless with the adrenaline of it all. He dropped the wine bottle to wrap his arm around her waist and spin her into him. He pressed her body to his as he leaned back against the wall, feeling the smoothness of her skin under his fingers, the narrowness of her waist. Her lips were soft, glossy. He tasted cherries and lemonade; no doubt her lip chap and not the bright pink lipstick Jess had insisted all the bridesmaids wear. He entered her mouth hungrily, tasting no alcohol on her breath. He stank of it himself. She giggled as he traced a finger up the inside of her thigh. She bit the bottom of his lip and dragged it down. Blue eyes looked up into his, sparkling and innocent, and she smiled in a way that made her teeth turn to points.

            “What’s wrong?” she asked.

            “Wrong?” he echoed. He wasn’t aware that anything was wrong. But he noticed then that his hands had slipped from her, his lips were sloppy, and he had pulled up against the wall in a way that suggested he’d rather not have her near. He forced his hands to move up into her hair and he shook his head. “Nothing’s wrong.”

            He brought his lips back to hers and kissed with a sense of the practice he used to do in the bathroom mirror. Only she was warmer than a mirror. And kissing her... it felt like cheating. Three fucking months and touching anyone else’s skin –whether that skin was smooth as a baby’s bottom or rough and hairy like Cas’ arms– was the darkest sin to him. He kissed her one more time and then pushed her back. “I’m sorry,” he said.

            She shrugged, the smile falling from her face. “You gotta better offer?”

            “Nah,” he said. He faked a smile. “You’re just my type too.”

            “Then what?”

            He shook his head. There were no words to explain it; not to a stranger, not to anyone. There had been no words to explain it to Cas himself. And the thought of Cas brought him back to him, crouched on the edge of their leather couch, his head in his hands. He said over and over and over again until the words burned into Dean’s brain, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore, Dean.” And those were the only words left in the end, the words Dean couldn’t reply to.

            He awkwardly patted the bridesmaid on the shoulder and walked back to the party. Things were starting to wind down, the DJ only playing slow songs, and only a few people were on the dance floor. Dean sat down at a table in the corner and flicked at the name card in front of him. George Wyatt. Someone from Sam’s work if he wasn’t mistaken. Nice guy. A little plain. Invisible. Dean finished the last dregs of white wine in the guy’s glass, since he doubted he’d be back for it. Only the family and Sam’s close friends were left now, waiting until the DJ went home to see the happy couple off to their hotel room a few blocks down. And Dean would turn away and go back to Sam and Jess’ house across town, slump down on the couch and promise himself he would look for a new place in the morning. Somewhere he wouldn’t be bothering them.

            He had made up some bullshit excuse when he had shown up on Sam’s doorstep. The fight with Cas was about... rent? A girl? Dean didn’t even remember what he had said anymore. He just remembered the look in Sam’s eye, the easy way his brother pulled him into his arms, and that he had known, immediately, that Sam had always known the truth about him and Cas. And he had no idea why that alone hadn’t been enough to make him go back to Cas, tell him he could do this. Or maybe he did know. He knew that he felt like less of a big brother as soon as Sam looked at him like that. As soon as Sam knew, Dean didn’t feel like himself anymore. He felt lost.

            Sam and Jess were leaning against each other in their chairs. Jess’ eyes fluttered closed and Sam pressed a kiss to the top of her head. Her chair tilted, she fell into him, and he used the hand around her shoulders to steady her on the ground. All the while he smiled tiredly at Bobby, who kept glancing back at Ellen. Ellen was packing up her things, getting ready to go, a phone between her ear and her shoulder. Probably checking up on Jo, who wasn’t there because she was halfway across the world at a dig site. Then there was Charlie and Dorothy swaying on the dance floor, drunk off their asses, and smiling like fools. A few more minutes and the whole thing would wrap up, Dean would stumble along to the hotel with everyone else and then take a cab home. The whole thing would be over. He could surrender to sleep again. He finished off all the drinks at the abandoned table.

 

The cold walk home kept him awake. He stumbled between Charlie and Dorothy, the three of them keeping each other up. Sam and Jess kept turning around to tell them to go home and the three of them would shout slurs until they kissed again. Then they stood in front of the hotel doors and waved while the happy couple disappeared inside.

            “Share a cab?” Dorothy asked. She already had her phone out. Or maybe it was Charlie’s phone, stolen from the back pocket of her dress pants. “I can get one in... Yes! Hello. We need a cab.”

            “You okay?” Charlie asked. She looked up at Dean from under his shoulder. Her brown eyes were glassy with alcohol, so Dean didn’t even bother with his fake smile. He wasn’t sure he could have managed it anyways. “You seem sad.”

            “You’re drunk,” he said. Then, to Dorothy, he added, “Two cabs.”

            “Two cabs!” she exclaimed.

            Dean exhaled a laugh at her and shook his head. He squeezed Charlie tighter and she wrapped her arms around him. Her small red head fit against the middle of his chest and her breath billowed white into the night air. It was summer, but the nights were ice cold, and Dean didn’t want to spend another night curled up under a threadbare blanket trying to make sure his feet didn’t freeze. As it was, tears were already freezing against his cheeks.

            The cabs came and Dean sent the girls in the first one. Then he slipped into the passenger seat of the second and exhaled heavily. He sniffed. The driver asked, “Where to?” and out of reflex or stupidity, he replied with his old address. Cas’ address. The correction was on the tip of his tongue, but he let it go, content to lean his head back against the headrest and watch the streetlights flicker by.

            He got out of the cab, thanked the driver, and stared up at the old brownstone. Ten apartments. All two bedrooms. The second in there’s filled with junk from college that had piled there after Dean had moved into Cas’ bed permanently. He hesitated with his finger on the buzzer and touched his thumb to where his name used to be written under Cas’. He wondered how long it had taken for Cas to do that. Was it hard? Did he do it right away, in one go, like ripping off a Band-Aid? Or did he scrape it off, letter by letter, shaving away a little more of Dean’s presence every time he left the apartment?

            “Fuck,” Dean breathed out. He pressed the button. Waited. Pressed it again. And again and again and again until he was sure that there was no possible way for Cas to get a word in between the buzzes. Then he stopped, sure Cas was already on his way down.

            And sure enough, a few minutes later, a man walked down the hallway to the door. Dean could just see him through the glass, fuzzy and indistinguishable. Then the door opened and Cas, wearing plaid pajama pants and a navy blue robe, stood on the threshold, his eyes caked with sleep.

            “You still have a key,” he said, resigned.

            Dean swallowed hard. All the breath had gone out of him. He didn’t know what he had expected, but it wasn’t this. It wasn’t Cas bedraggled and sleepy in the middle of the night, his hair stuck up at all angles and his feet bare against the cold wood of the lobby floor. Dean tried to step back, but he stumbled, and Cas caught his arm. Strong fingers wrapped around his suit jacket, tied cords around his elbow, and steadied him. He still wobbled, but with his eyes on Cas’ bright blue ones, he had no idea how.

            “It’s freezing,” Cas said. He pulled Dean into the building and shut the door behind him. “How drunk are you?”

            “Sammy’s married.”

            “I know.”

            Dean bit his bottom lip. Asking Cas not to come to the wedding had been the hardest thing he had done since their break-up. Harder than collecting his things. Harder than pretending to move on. Harder than not flinching every time Sam mentioned his name. He had left the message on the apartment’s landline, careful to call when he knew Cas was at work, and had said the words as fast as he could. And maybe he had been a little drunk. A lot drunk. Drunker than he was now.

            “I’m sorry.”

            “You’re drunk.” Cas sighed like it was just part of the job. Part of the territory that came with knowing Dean Winchester. He wrapped a strong arm around Dean’s waist and the two of them stumbled back to the building’s one elevator. Cas hit the up button and they waited in silence, rode in silence, and got back to the apartment in silence. “You can sleep on the couch,” Cas said.

            He deposited Dean inside the door and then went to the kitchen. Dean watched him move. His bare feet padded against wood, then tile, and stopped before the fridge. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he slurped down water, refilled the glass, and downed half of it again. Then he took a second glass from the cupboard –a different cupboard than Dean remembered the glasses being in– and filled it with water. He set it down on the coffee table in front of the couch.

            “You gonna come in?” Cas asked.

            Dean hesitated. He slammed the door behind him, winced, and then stumbled over to the couch. He flopped down face first and, if it weren’t for the familiar leather, he could’ve sworn he’d just gone back to Sam’s like he should have. A thick knitted blanket came down over him, adding weight to his already heavy state.

            “Sleep tight.”

            And he was out like a light.

 

Dean woke with a dull, throbbing headache. Every inch of him ached and he felt like he was being choked. His fingers searched his neck until he found the edge of his tie and he pulled it back until he could finally breathe again. Rolling over on the couch, his legs got tangled in the blanket and his head spun as he sat up too fast. His hands scraped over too-soft leather, a finger catching in a hole in the middle cushion, and his heart stopped. What the fuck had he done last night?

            He turned around to look at the kitchen. Cas stood in front of the stove, fully dressed. That wasn’t Cas. Cas was a pajama pants and pajama pants only until noon kinda guy. At least he used to be. Or maybe he didn’t want to be half-naked in front of Dean anymore.

            “Hey,” Dean managed. His voice cracked over the word, rough with sleep, and he saw Cas flinch at the sound of it.

            “Morning,” Cas said. He didn’t look up from the eggs as he scrambled them.

            “What...” Dean shook his head. “Did I...” Fuck. He searched for the right words, the right apology, but how the fuck was he supposed to say anything now? He had been the one who moved out. He was the one who refused to talk about it for months. He was the one who had avoided Cas, Cas’ work, every place he knew Cas went for three fucking months. Because there was nothing to say. He had nothing to say. “I’m sorry.”

            Cas shrugged. “You were drunk. Think of it like a drunk dial but with an address and a cabbie on the receiving end.”

            “I’ll go.”

            “That’s probably best.”

            Silence filled the apartment. Dean stared at Cas’ profile, the gentle curve of his jaw, the layer of stubble over his tanned skin. The shirt he was wearing, a dull blue, probably did wonders for his eyes. Not that Cas would look at him so he could figure that out. He stood on the hem of his jeans, but his feet were still bare against the tiles. It must have been cold. Cas’ feet had always been ice under the covers. It was a wonder he had any toes left at all.

            “Cas—”

            “Please don’t say anything.” Cas finally turned. And his eyes were fire. Fire over deep, dark bags, and there were signs that his stubble was more than a day old. The muscles in his arms shook and he gripped the spatula too tight, his fingers going white around it. “Just leave and go back to pretending we were only roommates, okay? Or whatever the fuck it was that you told Sam.”

            “Jesus, Cas. It’s been three months.”

            “Don’t call me that.”

            Dean rolled his eyes. “I’m not gonna call you fucking ‘Castiel’.”

            “Then don’t say my name at all.”

            Dean swallowed hard. He tapped his fingers against the top of the couch, feeling the scratch marks he had left there. He remembered every time they had had sex on this couch. Their first time together had been on this couch. But the break-up had happened months after their last time here, where he sat, and he felt like the couch must. Like a relic of a past relationship, something that worked, something that used to be happy.

            “Can we talk about this?”

            “Now you want to fucking talk,” Cas said. He forced a laugh, the sound grinding against his throat, and Dean bit down hard on his tongue. The laugh dissolved into something close to a sob, but his eyes stayed dry. “Do you have any idea how many times I called? For how long I thought you were just... just taking some time to cool off? I didn’t even know it was over for a fucking week, Dean! Do you wanna talk about that? Do you wanna talk about how fucking bad you are at handling everything?”

            “You were the one who said you couldn’t do this anymore!” Dean exclaimed. He leaped over the back of the couch to face Cas, but couldn’t bring himself to step closer. Three feet between them was like an entire ocean and Dean was exhausted, hungover, and angry. “You were the one who ended this. All I did was leave.”

            “I was upset, Dean. I didn’t say I wanted you to leave!”

            “You said it was over!”

            “Fuck that! Fuck it. You knew as well as I did that none of that meant anything. You were the one who ran like a scared little girl because you couldn’t come out to your fucking family.”

            “You shouldn’t have pushed me to.”

            “I shouldn’t have...” Cas trailed off, suddenly out of breath. He pursed his lips into a tight, white line. He dropped the spatula. Plastic clattered across the tile, leaving droplets of egg, like blood, on the floor. “I wasn’t trying to push you. I wasn’t. I just wanted to know that maybe, some day, when people came over we wouldn’t have to try to hide the fact that we sleep in one room and that maybe I would be able to hold your hand on the street one day or kiss you in front of your brother. I just wanted to know that one day I might be able to do those things. I couldn’t keep living like your roommate not knowing that it was ever going to end. That’s what I meant, Dean. Not that I was done with you.”

            “I didn’t know that.”

            “Then maybe you should’ve stuck around to find out.”

            “I thought you wanted me gone.”

            Cas shook his head. “I can’t... I can’t do this right now, Dean. Or ever. Okay? You ran away. That’s what I know. And that meant it was over, so it’s over, and we’re not fixing it here and now. You’re gonna leave and I’m gonna pretend you weren’t here and you’re gonna go to a bar and fuck a girl and like it and think you’ve finally cured yourself. And I wish you luck with that. So much luck. God, I really hope you get over me fucking fast so that I can go back to telling myself that you never loved me.”

            “Cas—”

            “Don’t correct me.”

            Dean bit his tongue until he tasted blood. Then he stepped back into the couch, his fingers finding his scratches, and he closed his eyes against the pain in his chest. It was over. He knew it was over. He took a deep breath, forced himself to nod, and patted the back of the couch like he was saying goodbye to it one last time. “I’ll try to do that for you,” he said. Then he walked out the door and his last image of Cas was no longer the broken man crouched at the edge of the couch, but the ruined man standing at the edge of the kitchen, with a look on his face Dean couldn’t quite understand. Something sad. Something disbelieving. Something that hurt.

 

That image haunted him every day to the point that he stopped trying to avoid Cas. It would be an overstatement to say he went out of his way to see him, but he started going back to his favourite coffee place on that street. He walked around the neighbourhood at night to see the lights in the office buildings. Once or twice he sat on the bench outside the brownstone, sipping his coffee, and waited for nothing in particular.

            And if maybe he saw Cas once or twice, or maybe they had coffee together, which turned to dinner, maybe that was okay. Maybe he brought Cas over to his new place and Cas laughed at the colour of the sky blue walls. They spent the day lying on the floor, looking up at the ceiling and pretending they could fly. And maybe there was still a foot of space between them that felt like the ocean, but the ocean was swimmable now.

            Then were the days they didn’t see each other and the days Cas texted him pictures of cats without context. Maybe one day they went to pick up Cas’ new cat and it wrapped itself around Dean’s legs so tightly he couldn’t even move. And Cas made a joke about how the cat would be disappointed if Dean wasn’t the one who brought it to its new house, and maybe Dean spent the night again, not on the couch, and wasn’t sent away in the morning.

            And maybe the sky blue walls of his new apartment never saw a new coat of paint, at least not by his hand, because soon he was home again. Sleeping in the same bed he’d slept in since Cas’ second year of college. Maybe their cat slept on Cas’ feet now, keeping them warm so that Dean wouldn’t stay up late at night with icicles touching the back of his calves.

            That fantasy of him and Cas standing in front of all their friends, neatly coupled on the couches, and telling them that they were getting married, happened. And everyone dissolved into calls of “I knew it!” “When?” “How fucking long?” “What the fuck is wrong with the two of you?” and Cas laughed while Dean blushed bright red against the onslaught. Maybe their wedding was outside too on a clear night and the two of them drunkenly left the reception to sit in the grass on their rented tuxedo pants to look up at the stars. And maybe no one walked them back to their hotel, because they didn’t go back to their hotel. They slept side by side in the grass, cradling a bottle of champagne like a baby, and never got around to a proper wedding night celebration.

            Maybe.


End file.
